Buck Showalter’s first coaching staff with the New York Mets is very quickly starting to come together. On Thursday morning another addition was announced as Eric Chavez is expected to leave his position with the Yankees and join Showalter and the Mets as the new hitting coach.
Chavez joined Aaron Boone‘s staff in the Bronx as the assistant hitting coach earlier this offseason. The Yankees granted him permission to interview with the Mets, and Chavez ultimately took the promotion.
This certainly seems to have all the makings of a hiring straight from general manager Billy Eppler. The two sides have crossed paths before and are said to have a very strong working relationship.
Chavez played 17 seasons at the big league level. He spent his first 13 seasons with the Oakland Athletics, where he was a six-time Glove Glove award winner and took home the 2002 Silver Slugger award.
Following the 2010 season, the Athletics declined Chavez’s club option, making him a free agent. He signed a minor-league deal with the Yankees, and that’s where him and Eppler first crossed paths.
It was in the Bronx that Chavez learned how to be a leader from fellow veterans Andruw Jones and Raul Ibanez. Injuries forced him to change his approach and focus more on the mental aspect of the game.
“I really just focused on slowing things down, it started with a mental commitment to that. You can talk about it, a lot of the phrases are cliche, but I committed to it. And then I really saw the results,” Chavez told Brendan Kuty of NJ.com.
He spent the next two seasons serving as the go-to veteran in the clubhouse for a young Arizona Diamondbacks team. Dealing with the injury bug again, Chavez ended up as more of a coach than a player during his final season.
“I think the guys had so much respect for him because of the player he was. A guy like that you want to learn from. While he was here, he was a guy that would answer any question. I was fortunate he was willing to share,” Paul Goldschmidt told Fabian Ardaya of the Athletic.
Following his retirement, Chavez returned to the Yankees to serve as a special assistant to both Cashman and Eppler. Chavez said that that experience working in the front office educated him in so many different ways.
“I know the game from a player’s perspective, but then also getting to see it from the front office and getting to work with player development and the draft process, I always knew getting back on the field was going to be in my future,” Chavez said.
The following year, Eppler left the organization to become the general manager of the Los Angeles Angels. He brought Chavez along with him to Anaheim in the same role of special assistant to the GM, before he gave him his first coaching gig with the Triple-A Salt Lake Bees.
Chavez told the Athletic that his flexible role in Anaheim was sort of like a “baseball grad school,” and it opened his mind to new concepts and really helped him learn more about the analytics and numbers side of the game.
“Analytics isn’t going anywhere, so baseball people, if you want to be in this game, you better be ready to adapt to it, to accept it, to learn it,” Chavez said. “It’s part of this game. It’s going to be a balance, and the teams that are balancing it right now are the teams that are successful.”
He added, “I’m not saying that analytics is the end-all, say-all, but it’s a piece of the puzzle. You have to be able to learn what you’re trying to do as a player, and then understand that this is what the numbers are telling you, and a piece that together.”
Between his experiences on the field and in the front office, the 44-year old Chavez should be able to provide a nice balance of both the old school and new school approach for Mets hitters in 2022.
